GameSpot's The Lobby: Is Metroid Prime: Federation force any good?

August 25, 2016

Transcript

[MUSIC]
Okay.
Metroid Prime: Federation Force.
Wow, we didn't even plan that.
I saw it coming.
It's the name of the game.
[LAUGH]
It's like, that's the title of the game.
It's out on 3DS.
Is the review up [INAUDIBLE], Peter?
The review in progress is up.
I literally just got the last few edits for the full review, so that'll be live in like an hour.
Okay.
I mean, it's coming hot on the heels of this, yeah.
Can you reveal the score before it goes?
Is this a preview of the?
Well, if you go to Google.
[LAUGH]
Right now, for some reason
If you type in Metro Prime Federation Force, it says that Game Spot's giving it 1 out of 10.
Holy ****, you're giving this a 1 out of 10?
It's probably some sort of algorithm disaster.
I don't know, something like that happened like a week or two ago where another game.
Or like we hadn't given it a score.
There was like a different score that appeared there.
Right.
Do not believe that.
That is not Anything that we're involved in that is all just Google pulling something out of his ****.
Yeah stop being weird Google.
So does that means it's not getting a one out of ten?
It's not getting one out of ten.
I don't want to talk about the score on this.
I'd rather actually focus on the game just talking about the game.
The first thing I want to talk about then is the quandary you had last week when I last talked to you about it which is this is a game that has
Quite a steep, or no, it has a difficulty curve that seems to be pretty, I don't know, it's almost wants you to play with more people, because this is a multiplayer game, right?
It is both a single player and a multiplayer game, and I will defend that position despite people's cries to the contrary, ooh, sorry.
Cuz on the main menu, it says solo play, it says Play with others, or whatever, like co-op.
Those are two separate things.
The game makes it clear that you can do one or the other.
It even gives you an item to boost your strength, like how much damage you give and how little you take.
And the game's saying you can play this by yourself.
The problem is, the difficulty, so let's say, the hit points of the enemies or the damage they deal, Does not change depending on your party size.
Right.
Whether you are playing with four people or by yourself you are facing the same odds.
Now granted single player you get that item but that item doesn't allow you to be in more than one place at a time.
Right, yeah.
And in a game like this where it's so punishing when you die that you have to start a mission completely over.
Playing with other people that can revive you in a matter of seconds.
Yeah of course.
By tapping the button changes the game entirely.
You can just play with reckless abandon and die and get revived.
Single player you **** up for like 2 seconds on a boss with a one-hit-kill Thanks for trying.
I get a lot of missions that are like keep this thing protected, keep this thing alive.
And you're just like-
Low escort missions, yeah.
So to be fair, Peter was playing the review, he didn't get through to, he hit a wall with a boss.
Right.
And so it was like, hey Justin, can you help me out, can you start playing this?
All right, I'm gonna play it.
Got through the first two missions by myself.
I'm like Peter kind of sucks in this game, this is not hard at all.
This is actually kind of fun.
I play til I get to the boss because To play together, you have to have both have unlocked that level.
I can't just jump in and be like, I'll play this with you.
So you have to grind to get to the level where he was, okay, right.
It's like, this is no problem.
Then I get to the boss, I'm like I'll just try it out, it's fine.
Totally kills me.
Like it one-hit kills this boss, and when you die-
How long is the fight if it can one-hit kill you?
Well, it's like a two-stage fight.
Right.
So the first stage takes maybe ten minutes.
My gosh.
If you're playing it by yourself.
Right okay.
So yeah and then you get to the second stage and maybe you last another minute but the moment the boss does this one move if you're in the wrong place and you can't turn around very quickly so you can lose track of the boss as he goes under water and you're on like a little island in the middle of a body of water so.
Or if he throws you off the island you lose.
So I guess when you were together did you beat this boss?
So as soon as we teamed up.
Like literally five minutes.
I think we just totally [UNKNOWN] it.
It was no problem at all.
And was the next level as difficult, or was this like a weird isolated kind of thing?
We got to, that was mission 7, I think we got to mission 13 or 14.
And then we faced a boss that we couldn't beat.
We played it for maybe 15 minutes.
Then there was a 20 minute session.
And we just couldn't do it.
And I flipped my lid, I lost my ****.
I punched myself in the leg and yelled in the office.
I was like **** this I'm done.
But Peter Burns himself.
Yeah.
[LAUGH] Then over the weekend, the servers went live.
And I was able to go online and play with a full party.
With randoms.
Randoms.
Okay yeah.
In four minutes and 48 seconds we beat the boss that me and Justin could not beat in 20 minutes.
Right.
And it only took that long because you literally have to deal with like a mechanism that you have to reload.
There was no faltering.
We were just back and forth, back and forth doing it.
That's exactly how long it should take.
Right.
If you're at your best, and-
That's nuts.
So then they're basically, the game is clearly meant to be played with lots of people, but it's being sold as a game Or you can play this on your own?
But is it meant to be played with a full party?
Because it's too easy at that point.
Right.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
At that point, I feel like there's no challenge and when there's no challenge, you're kind of just going through the motions, right?
You have this ability to choose weapons before you go into battle.
You might think okay I'll be a healer.
I'll be this and that.
With a full party, you don't need that sort of system.
Everyone just shoots anything they want.
If they fall, okay, someone goes by and taps the button and they get revived.
Yeah.
It's nice to heal somebody, but it feels unnecessary when you're with a full party.
Whereas when you're on your own or with two people, it sounds incredibly difficult, like [INAUDIBLE], you're working, you're struggling.
And it's ok, there's a way to strike a balance there, and that is to figure out the ideal party size for each mission.
LIke Justin was saying, a lot of the earlier ones, and some of the fillers between bosses can be handled on your own and are okay.
The challenge is there because you're keeping up with a lot of enemies by yourself.
There's a lot of pressure and there's a lot of action going on.
But then you have too many people and maybe the mission doesn't feel like that.
Right.
That's so strange.
The chat I'm kinda losing my mind about is [INAUDIBLE] is saying, this sounds like atrocious game design, holy cow!
[INAUDIBLE] saying it does not seem to adapt well based on the amount of players.
It does not adapt at all.
Yeah it doesn't even try.
I think it's surprising how well it does the controls for a first person because I thought that was going to be the worst part.
Like playing a first person game on your 3DS and it's [INAUDIBLE] not having the ability to do a quick turn to look behind you, But the controls we're actually shooting and getting are, like that worked really well.
It works really well.
I mean the left analog stick controls your forward and reverse movement and your rotation left and right so you can move and look to your side.
And then when you want to look up or down, hold down the r button and use the gyroscope in the system to just move the system and it works really, really well like as he said.
That is one of the best things about the game is it approves it.
YOu can have a great first person shooter on 3DS.
It's just a shame that this game doesn't deliver any sort of adventure that lives up to Metroid Prime, which it pulls from.
And just because it's not really a Metroid game, that doesn't make it bad to begin with.
Yeah.
It just means
In a way, it doesn't have a crush, right?
And it should be on even footing, just on its own terms, but it can succeed on its own terms.
Regardless of whether Samus is in it, or what role she plays.
Right.
Any of that.
Yeah.
So people who are gonna be fans of the series are not quite getting what they want.
Because they want a traditional Metroid game and they want Samus to be a part of it.
And it doesn't feel like it expands out on the Metroid lore in a fun way.
And as a general shooter, it just doesn't live up to your expectations of I just want a fun shooter.
Yeah.
It's really stupid.
The missions, they say, okay sit down on the box.
That's really stupid.
[LAUGH] We need you to go out to this mission to accomplish a thing that's going to thwart the pirates.
And you go and do it and you're like cool.
The next mission it's like remember that thing you did?
It didn't really work.
Okay.
We suck we're the worst marines ever.
The last two missions before the final [UNKNOWN].
Say okay.
We found this energy transfer link where they're sending energy from one planet to another.
No.
If we destroy this we'll destroy their base that's causing us all our problems.
Right.
And we'll be fine.
Destroy the oil pipeline, got it.
Right.
You literally destroy it and it's like, it turns out they have another one.
[LAUGH]
You have to go do the exact same thing in a different location.
Like This is the final act of the game.
You're bringing me through to the end and that's all you have?
You're the space marine.
The thing is you're the marines, but all the time you're like, we found reports of [INAUDIBLE] and a bounty hunter, who's given us new information.
Like aren't you the marines?
Shouldn't you be more put together than this?
You have a whole army.
This is four dudes.
You guys go out there.
Sam is doing a little bit better.
Try to do what she did.
God that's weird.
That's almost like teasing the fact that you're not being challenged.
She's actually doing a way better job than you are.
Yeah you kind of suck guys.
I guess last question on this is when so presumably you got to the end playing with Justin.
No, me and Justin couldn't do it together.
When you went online.
I had to play with a party of four.
So could you go back and play those in solo?
When you unlock on one tier, do you unlock on the other, or when you go back-
There's no tier.
It's just you're in together.
No, what you do unlock is hard mode.
[LAUGH]
[INAUDIBLE] [LAUGH] [NOISE] Does that make, okay does that make it so that the early levels are fun now when you're on your own?
I don't care, I don't want to replay them, they're so basic, they're so basic.
I mean look if your going to implement a hard mode how difficult is it just to make that the foreplayer mode.
[LAUGH]
DId I mention theres a soccer game?
No
Yes you like rocket league?
I sure do
We love rocket league
Also tell me about soccer game
On a 3DS.
And so you have this big ball, everyone's trying to get it in the goal.
Because everyone can shoot at it from as far away as they want to.
Everyone is shooting at it no matter where they are, and the ball just-
[LAUGH]
Moves inches.
Everyone's got Dhalsim legs, so they're just kicking this ball constantly.
If
The least, it is god.
God all right.
They put the energy into that but not.
You can download that for free.
Yeah apparently you can download it for free.
Are you sure this isn't getting one at a time?
[CROSSTALK]
It controls really well.
Some of the boss fights when you have a team that's the right size.
I did play a few missions where the game felt more balanced.
Cool but that doesn't take away from the fact that
The game forces you to put in the leg work to figure out, like, what the difficulty should be, and how to make it happen.
Yeah.
That's not the way that this is supposed to work.
Yeah, that seems kinda strange.
Well, there you go.
That's your prime.
Federation Force.
You are so uncertain of that name.
I know, do you know why?
I kept going, choose another game.
But I actually got that right, it was Freedom Force.
[LAUGH]
Yeah.
The rational games made this one?
Yeah, this is Ken Levine's metro game.
We're here up soon on GameSpot.com.
Go check it out.
[MUSIC]